“Politics is a team sport.”
-Josh Holmes
I’m going to torture the crap out of an analogy here so, if you are squeamish, you might want to look away.
If you don’t know who Josh Holmes is, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Holmes is a political strategist with Cavalry, LLC who appears on Bret Baier’s show occasionally during the All Star Panel segment. For the record, I like Holmes. I listen to the podcast he hosts along with his business partners and X/Twitter troll Comfortably Smug. The “fellas” (as they refer to one another) are all smart, funny and very entertaining. More interestingly, they are all GOP insiders that provide some great insights in virtually every one of their two to three times a week podcasts. They also do a great job of mocking the left in the most entertaining of ways.
BUT.
They ARE establishment insiders. Holmes and two of his partners, John Ashbrook and Michael Duncan, worked for Mitch McConnell and all have been involved in GOP politics for most of the 21st century. The positive of this is that the listener is exposed to a lot of the thinking that goes on inside the tent and during campaign season they have provided some insights I would not otherwise consider. However, they also expose some thinking that reveals the jersey-wearing mentality of the political class, which brings me to the lead in quote above.
Holmes uttered these words when lamenting the state of the current primary race. Given the backgrounds of the fellas, it should be obvious that they are more concerned about a GOP White House win than they are about any particular candidate taking the prize. THIS is the thinking of the GOP establishment. This theme runs throughout their podcasts. They were and remain irate at the small group of reps that ousted Kevin McCarthy. They never seem to acknowledge that McCarthy, without opening himself up to that very possibility, never would have been elected speaker. They constantly lament the minority of the party that refuses to compromise to get legislation passed that will only take the country in the progressive direction just a little bit slower than if the Dems controlled both houses of Congress.
They are perfectly content to be the Washington Generals.
When using this analogy I think it is important to understand how we are keeping score. As smart as the fellas are, I believe that they view each election as one whole game. Win the House? That’s a “W” on our record. Lose the Senate? That an “L”. Not surprising since these guys are paid by politicians to help them win campaigns. But listening to them, one quickly understands the vast chasm between politics and policy. The GOP in this world view is perfectly happy to be the Washington Generals as long as they get a couple of wins in what they view as the record-keeping metric. Unfortunately, the Dems are playing a completely different game. Their game is taking place not over the course of election cycles but over decades, and longer.
In this game the GOP is getting its ass handed to it.
I should pause here to point out that I don’t identify as a Republican. I used to but I shed that long ago. I mostly vote Republican when I choose to support a candidate because the policies are much closer to my classical liberal beliefs than any Dem I have come across in recent decades. But I view this as a lesser of two evils. I have been convinced, much to the frustration of some friends that still view themselves as Reagan Republicans, that the GOP has been taking us down the same path as the Dems, just on a slower timeline. And, if given my preference, I would much rather witness the end of the US in real time than miss it by 100 years. But I’m convinced, with this current batch of establishment pols, the American experiment is over as I knew it growing up. Not a matter of “if” only “when”.
Another thing I should point out is that I have been interested in and followed US politics since the 1976 election. Yes, I am both that old and was abnormally interested in adult stuff at a very young age. So my perspectives are not those of somebody who only recently sees the decay of our system. I’ve been watching it evolve for almost 50 years.
Back to the Generals.
What we are witnessing today in politics is the equivalent of basketball players being given jobs with the Generals who are saying “you know, I bet we can actually win a game if we just TRY.” The other players on the team understand the profound danger. For decades, many of them have showed up, laced up their sneakers and have done what they are told to do. They have gone out, put on a good show and collected their rewards as a result. Suddenly, new players join who are not going along with the program. They are scoring when they shouldn’t be. They are playing actual defense rather than running in circles trying to catch Ayanna “Curley” Pressley as she dribbles the ball like a showman.
And the bosses are pissed. I don’t mean the GOP leadership. They’re puppets in the game. I mean the defense industry, the banks, the WEF, the hedge fund billionaires. All of them. They are furious that there is a group not going along with the script. The biggest of these disrupters is Trump. But we know the other names. Greene. Gaetz. Massie. Paul. In small numbers they can be overcome. For the most part the coach has been able to keep them on the proverbial bench. But more recently, they need bodies to put on the floor. And suddenly, the disrupters have the ability to impact the game. Not the ability to win the game, mind you, just make it a lot more complicated to get the desired outcome.
This works for me. When you take off the jersey and stop wearing the colored greasepaint on your face of your favored team things become far more clear. My team is the majority of America. What’s best for them? And it isn’t what we have in the current admin. The energy policies, the border policies, the economic policies, the debt, the spending. It is all leading us off a very large cliff. Without disrupters nothing will change. My team is not GOP. It is not Democrat. It is the average citizens of the US. And it is time for disruption. So let’s elect more disrupters. More Abbots. More DeSantises. More Noems. Let’s fight where we can win some battles. Take back state powers as granted in the constitution. Every power the states take back will, by definition, shrink the power of the feds.
I’m not suggesting I believe the Washington Generals can actually win a game. But that definitely can’t happen unless they try. And, in trying, who knows, maybe they get lucky.